


thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names

by Ias



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, M/M, Manipulation, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 08:31:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4557780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s almost laughable, in retrospect. That after everything, after all of this, Annatar can still surprise you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names

It’s almost laughable, in retrospect. That after everything, after all of this, Annatar can still surprise you.

You had seen so many sides of him, so many different faces—you had thought each one like the facet of a jewel, and you rejoiced at each new discovery. That was before you stood against him on the steps of the House of the Mírdain, with the smoke of your burning city stinging your eyes, knowing his hand had wielded the torch. Before his true name branded you with a wound you still cannot touch. You thought that you knew him. You never realized how foolish those thoughts truly were.

Yes, it’s almost amusing: that knowing now exactly who and what he is, what he’s done—that you can still think him capable of mercy. That somehow, deep in your heart, you never really thought the torture would begin.

“I want so little from you, Tyelpë,” he croons, and the knife he presses to your cheek is so cold, so sharp. “I only ask for what is already mine.”

“You have no right to them,” you say, and your voice does tremble ever so slightly, because you have already tasted the first draught of pain. You do not know yet how deep the cup, how bitter the dregs. “Your knowledge was gifted freely. The Three were mine alone.”

Annatar sighs. You’re acutely aware of the knife, how it skims down your cheek without breaking the skin, how it slides from your jaw to just beneath your chin. “Yours…” he ponders. “And what are you now, Tyelpë,” he murmurs, “if not mine?”

You open your mouth to protest, the sick lurch in your stomach allowing no silence. A motion of Annatar’s blade cuts your arguments short. The knife’s point draws a red line over your lower lip, and you dare not twist away, not even as the blade slips between your lips and clacks against your teeth, as your tongue stills so dangerously in your mouth and your heart wails in your throat.

Always, Annatar watches, savors the micro-expressions that flit over your face. “You sold yourself to me long before I put your city to the sword,” he says. “All that you have created, all that you _are_ , belongs to me.”

The metal is bitter. You can taste the hint of your blood on it even before it twists. When you scream it cuts all the deeper.

 

 

You reveal the Seven, in the end. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, that it was always the Three that you sought to protect, but in your heart you know it’s not true. You just wanted the pain to stop. You broke.

You often think about what Annatar would do if you told him where to find the Three.  At times, you can think of nothing else, desperate thoughts scuttling around the corners of your mind like cockroaches. You think—and you’re fairly confident in this, confident enough to be tempted—that Annatar would simply kill you. But other times there’s something else, a look, a quirk of the mouth, which reminds you of the Annatar you thought you had known. Something which makes you believe that he would want to keep you alive. The thought terrifies you beyond belief.

You can remember making the lesser rings with him, what feels like an eternity ago—and if you thought you knew about eternity before, well, that was before Annatar taught you all the ways in which agony could make a minute fracture and stretch and expand until there was nothing else. But you still remember, after everything that’s happened, how Annatar’s eyes had gleamed in the light of the forge, how his hands and your hands worked together to sculpt fire and liquid metal.

And you also remember, though you try very hard not to, the other ways those hands had moved; how they had moved over your flesh like they were shaping the setting of a jewel, so delicate. You remember the way his eyes would drift half-shut as he became truly lost, the exact tilt of his neck as you took the skin between your teeth. You remember how he would lie awake afterwards to watch you fall asleep. his steady breaths brushing your eyelids until they ceased to flutter open, until a soft and dark oblivion took you in its arms.

You created such beautiful things with him.  

 

 

It’s one of the bad days, when the tremors in your limbs haven’t settled from the last time, when there’s something different in Annatar’s eyes, something urgent and cruel. You think perhaps you could die, right there, that finally it will all end—when suddenly everything stops. And then Annatar is in front of you again, not the new Annatar you’ve met within these four walls, but the one you knew from so very long ago. His face is smooth, bright. Once you thought him glowing, that the light of the Trees shined through him still. You were mistaken. Annatar _gleams_ , as bright and cold and hard as steel, giving off no light except that which he can steal.

He knees before you, hands on your knees, rubbing those soothing patterns into your skin that you remember so horribly well. “Do you remember,” he begins, “that night in the forge, when you had suffered some slight or quarrel and stayed at the anvil long past nightfall… you were angry when I found you, but not so angry that you so much as hesitated to get down on your knees…” Annatar chuckles softly to himself, looking into your eyes with a demure smile. “I couldn’t believe how easy it was. How willingly, how _eager_ you bent to me.”

“Was it all a lie?” Your words are not your own. They belong to the pain, torn out of you like a living chunk of yourself never meant to be exposed. If they summon a flicker of something across Annatar’s face, if he falters for only a second, you can’t know whether to trust your own eyes.

Slowly, Annatar’s hand reaches up to cup the side of your face. You flinch away, as far as you’re able. His smile is so kind, so understanding.

“Yes. Yes it was.”

 

 

He shows you the pike beforehand. It’s been honed to a point and then blunted. Annatar explains that this is to keep you alive longer. “We’re still a few days march from Elrond’s forces,” he murmurs. “I want you to see them.”

When they begin, Annatar stands by your side. You scream. Oh, you scream, and you beg in earnest now, and you know that it’s too late, that this, truly is the end. But not a good end, and not a merciful one. Annatar strokes your hair and shushes you, wiping the sweat from your brow as the hours drag on, pressing kisses to your forehead. But you can feel the delighted smile on his lips, and when you writhe and sob you can hear him laugh.

 

 

You see the army on the third day. They bear your body high on the pole which impales you. A banner. A sign of what’s to come. The Elves see you too—you can tell by the cries borne on the dead air.  They rise in pitch when the first of the arrows strikes your chest, black-feathered and barbed. More arrows follow. You inspect the fletching as your head falls forward, staring blankly down at the feathers from your breast. You scarcely feel it. The blackness is closing in at last, the only mercy you will ever be shown.

And Annatar is there, standing at your feet, looking up at you with an expression you cannot read. These are your final moments, you realize—and Annatar is going to take them for his own, as he’s taken everything else from you. You wish you could deny him that last piece of yourself, could die selfish and alone, could cling to one more moment that Annatar hasn’t touched. But it’s too late for that. Your thoughts are splintering apart, but Annatar stands in the center of the maelstrom. You can’t tear your eyes away, and it seems that neither can he. Even in death, in your most intimate moments, Annatar will not let you go.

You expected him to gloat. A gleam of triumph, at the least. But as the grey squeezes around the edges of your eyes, you could almost be somewhere far away, in a bed that was once yours with Annatar’s hooks lodged in your heart, but it hadn’t hurt back then. He liked to watch you fall asleep. Perhaps back then he had imagined you were dying every time you closed your eyes. Perhaps now he imagines you will wake up to him yet again, that it isn't really over. Part of you believes it too. You never really thought that you could escape him. There was a time that you never would have wanted to.

The grey mist closes around you like a fist. You're going away. Drifting apart. It's not a relief. Wherever you're going, you're carrying him with you. 

You die with your eyes open. Annatar is the last thing you see.


End file.
